Montreal Gazette - Crime & mistaken memory

News

Psychological and neuroscience research have chipped away at the credence we give to witness accounts, and shown how memories can be unwittingly manipulated. And yet eyewitness identification remains a very important piece of evidence in many criminal cases.

Psychological and neuroscience research have chipped away at the
credence we give to witness accounts, and shown how memories can be
unwittingly manipulated. And yet eyewitness identification remains
a very important piece of evidence in many criminal cases.

Some researchers are asking what role memories should have in
court, if neuroscience can make criminal trials more objective and
whether our legal system is keeping up with - or getting ahead of -
science.

"The amygdala is sensitive to stress hormones, it has a lot of
receptors for them," says Jorge Armony, a
neuroscientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute
and McGill University, who studies the interplay of emotion with
consciousness, attention and memory. "The more stress, the more the
amygdala responds," he says.